THE NORTH WAIRARAPA SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 5, Issue 1539, 20 November 1883, Page 2

THE NORTH WAIRARAPA SETTLERS' ASSOCIATION.

(From the Standard.) , " President Hawkins" and the members of. the North Wairarapa Settlers' Association are to the front again.. The system of land' nationalisation—as applied to the unsold Crown Landsisbased upon a perfectly sound and just principle. • That fussy individual, ." President Hawkins," < may jßftke speeches against land but the opinions of some,of the''most able thinkers,, writers and atateamen of the day are all in favor of the system. And despite all the ignorant and blatant speechifying of "President Hawkins" " land nationalisation" will yet be fully carried out in New Zealand, As to taxing lands which ate to be specially benefited by the construction of railway lines, we do not see how the justice of such.a proposal can be questioned. But on another point" President Hawkins"isperfectly right. • He asserts that the Wellington Press—tho Post and Times—burked the roport of the proceedings of the association, and that theso journals are guided in their views ,by Ministerial instructions, These assertions, are quite true. The New"Zealand Times is bound, soul and body, to the present Ministry. The .nominal proprietor of that journal is their tool, and tho editor their flunkey. Tho; Ministry and the Bank of New Zealand have got the Times under their thumb and could apply tho pressure of the financial screw whenever they liked.; Tho Evening Post is not under the financial screw, of the Government; but it is guided and controlled by Ministers all the same. Its editor h a mere mouthpiece of Ministers—a sort of lackey who prowls about backstairs and tho chambers of the TJndor Secretaries, ready to bo primed with Ministerial information, and to publish 'whatever, opinions he is told to express. In this respect both tho Wellington journals —the Post and Times-have arrived at tho very deepost depth of journalistic flunkeyism and degradation. All over Now Zealand these journals stink in the nostrils of every honest, independent and right thinking men;.